By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D.
The Truth Contributor
The dark ghettos are social, political, educational, and — above all — economic colonies. — Kenneth B. Clark
Every office in Lucas County found a way to tighten its belt this year — except the two that already eat first and eat most.
But let’s start with the good: Lucas County is safer than it’s been in 30 years. Homicides are down 18 percent. Shootings are down almost 30 percent. And when the Lucas County commissioners asked every county office to cut 13 percent, or at minimum hold flat, most of them did.
The prosecutor and the sheriff both more than pushed back — saying the demand itself was out of line. And next year, for the first time, the county’s community funding line — the grants to those on the ground keeping people safe — isn’t shrinking. It’s gone.
Everybody Cut Back But Them
Public budget filings plainly show that 70 percent — a full 70 cents of every general fund dollar in Lucas County — goes to the criminal justice system. Nobody’s disputing that this isn’t necessary and important work. What’s troubling, though, is the assumption that the system is owed whatever they ask, while everybody doing the actual work of catching people before they fall through the cracks gets told there’s nothing left.
Prosecutor Julia Bates asked for $371,000 more than last year. Sheriff Mike Navarre wants a 10 percent larger budget, another almost $5 million. His staff got nine percent raises last year. He’s back asking for six percent more, while community organizations doing violence and other prevention work that actually move the declining crime numbers — are told, “Sorry. We can’t help you.”
Meanwhile, caseworkers at Job and Family Services who hold the actual floor together — the people families call when the lights are about to get shut off, or when your Big Mama raising three grandkids can’t stretch a SNAP benefit that already tells her what she can and can’t buy. Federal cuts have shifted a fifth of SNAP funding nationally onto states, projected to cost Ohio hundreds of millions a year. Ohio’s own budget already cut food program funding by a quarter. None of that shows up as a line item — it shows up as a caseworker carrying more files than the job was designed for, working through lunch just trying to keep the families already in crisis from disaster because of personnel cuts or unfilled job vacancies.
The Common Pleas Court, which actually met its target, only by eliminating six positions and cutting weekend drug testing. Yet, the Board of Lucas County Commissioners still must find roughly $4 million to keep administering SNAP and cash assistance to the 69,000 residents who depend on them, after Washington cut its share of a cost the state and county used to split.
Even then, JFS and community organizations didn’t demand more this year. They’re doing more with less. They are asking, in effect, to keep doing the job with the tools they already have — while the criminal justice system asks for a raise nobody else is getting.
A Matter of Entitlement
The criminal justice apparatus has become its own economy: contracts, overtime, equipment, new hires, growing every year whether crime rises or falls. Yet, the funding ask still gets larger. From where I sit, there’s only one word for that. Entitled. The sheriff traded a two-year-old Jeep for a brand-new personal-use Ford Explorer this year—a mere drop in the bucket of its fifty-million-dollar budget. But small numbers like that never sit in the departments that have to go without.
Meanwhile, the folks catching kids before the streets do and rescuing families one missed payment from going hungry — they’re being cut out or asked to hang on by a thread, while the system calling itself the last line of defense asks for millions more.
That’s not fair, and it ain’t right!
The prosecutor and sheriff will get their day at the microphone September 15. Let them make their case. But somebody needs to ask why the community folks doing the critical work on the ground are forced to fight over crumbs while the folks carrying the gavel and wearing badges are asking for heaping seconds.
Psychologist Kenneth Clark called our community a colony someone always profits when a system is built to extract instead of invest — to take from our plate so somebody else’s already crowded pantry stays full.
The only question left is whether our community keeps paying it quietly.
The community needs to show up to the public hearing on September 15. Bring both your voice and your anger.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, PhD, at drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
The Lucas County Commissioners have asked all departments which cannot meet the 13 percent budget cut to present their case to the Commissioners at the regularly scheduled meeting starting with the September 15 session – 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.